Northern Arizona University Puts Innovation Into Action with Willow

Case Study

When Northern Arizona University (NAU) launched its Smart Campus Master Plan, they recognized the need to break down silos and unify their data systems. With Willow, NAU built a powerful digital twin—a dynamic, virtual representation of its campus buildings and systems—that unlocked actionable insights across energy use, occupancy, and maintenance. This enabled NAU to achieve significant operational efficiencies, enhance sustainability, and scale their data infrastructure so every future building seamlessly integrates into the system. With this foundation, NAU is creating a unified, structured data estate that raises the bar for university operations.

Project Highlights

8+ integrations and 11+ data silos converged across static, spatial, and live data sets

building automation / HVAC
energy metering
campus utility billing
CO2 grid emissions
occupancy, building, and space level
event management
work ticket / asset and maintenance management
3D building spatial models
ܱstatic asset documentation

129 buildings across academic, administrative, student life, and other mixed-use spaces leveraging Willow Activate Packs

Sustainability
Building spatial geometry and static data
Building energy and operations
Occupancy

$200k+ of estimated avoidable cost from Willow-generated insights from deployed Activate technology and Activate Packs within first year

Challenge

Breaking down silos for a better campus

Northern Arizona University (NAU) has a unique vision among US public research institutions: to be the
nation’s preeminent engine of opportunity, vehicle of economic mobility, and driver of social impact. Based in Flagstaff, NAU’s campus sprawls over 600 acres and hosts around 30,000 people daily. But the university’s built environment presented a major challenge to its Climate Action Plan goal of being carbon-neutral by 2030.

To achieve this goal, NAU developed a Smart Campus Master Plan, which incorporated the eventual use of thousands of sensors to track and manage university facilities. Two years after launching the plan, however, University VP and CIO Steven Burrell and his team noticed the various IoT devices, flow meters, and building management systems (BMSs) didn’t communicate with each other.

“One of our early difficulties was the sheer overhead of interacting with all those building devices,” Burrell says. “There’s a lot of proprietary in that area, and aggregating the data in a way we could actually use and act upon it was extraordinarily difficult.”

Steven Burrell, University VP and CIO.

This issue presented a problem for Facilities Management and was a reporting challenge. “Our Sustainability Officer and his team would spend literally months pulling together reports, trying to understand how we were doing against our sustainability goals,” Burrell remembers. Without a better process for normalizing data across multiple systems, the team spent a lot of time trying to understand all of the disparate relationships and data sources, and the results often came too late to take meaningful action.

Frontline workers also had a hard time accessing information limiting their effectiveness. No two university buildings are alike, and the lack of data made it difficult for new hires to familiarize themselves with the particularities of each building.

Burrell saw that simply tweaking NAU’s existing business processes wouldn’t get them over the carbon-neutral finish line. The university’s entire model required an overhaul—NAU needed a platform that would allow Burrell’s team, Facilities Management, and the Sustainability Office to collaborate effectively.

Solution

Digital twin technology offers a comprehensive campus view

Supporting NAU’s Smart Campus Master Plan meant eliminating silos between all the departments and data, which Burrell admits is no small feat.

“These are formidable challenges even for a university with great expertise,” Burrell says.
His team was also interested in exploring digital twin technology. A research university like NAU might be tempted to build their own digital model to aggregate and visualize data from all campus buildings, but Burrell understood they needed more than a digital model. A truly useful digital twin:

Connects to a variety of disparate live data systems at the edge and in the cloud
Surfaces data across various visualizations and workflows in a single experience
Creates intelligence by analyzing the interconnectedness of the data using IoT, cloud, knowledge graphs, and AI
Empowers facilities managers, engineers, and decision makers to make smarter decisions with improved workflows

Willow and its AI-driven platform for the built world offered all of the above. NAU started by integrating data across multiple building management systems into a virtual representation—or knowledge graph—of devices, mechanical systems, and their relationships.

“We saw the opportunity to integrate and leverage AI and other cloud technologies to comprehensively see what was going on at the university at any given moment, and act accordingly,” Burrell says.

Integrating data into the twin resulted in a wide array of actionable insights. These led to some early wins related to energy and cost reduction, occupant comfort, operational oversight, and preventative maintenance.

Results

Laying a solid foundation for transformation

After creating this initial momentum, the facilities, sustainability, and IT teams continued to identify new opportunities for innovation, such as leveraging occupancy data and dynamic grid interactions. They noted the fundamental shift in dynamically managing campus buildings based on their usage. According to education research and technology leader EAB, the increases in remote and hybrid work have reduced usage of academic and administrative offices to around 50%. With this in mind, NAU worked with Willow to integrate existing wireless infrastructure, in-room classroom systems and sensors, and a campus-wide scheduling platform to capture real-time occupancy data.

They then used Willow to correlate this data with HVAC system performance to identify energy-saving opportunities. By implementing setbacks in building control systems, NAU optimized HVAC settings across hundreds of rooms, unlocking significant savings. These adjustments are now automated daily, advancing NAU’s Climate Action Plan goals.

The digital twin has also allowed the team to shift away from the university’s previous reactive stance. “We can see the anomalous events as they happen and get them into the hands of engineers and tradespeople, who can act proactively,” Burrell says.

In addition, Willow’s ability to connect multiple data sets—like utility billing, metering, BMS, and occupancy patterns—into a single platform and deliver them as actionable insights has increased efficiency and decreased the number of recurring issues. “It’s fundamentally shifted how we spend our time, from managing the arduous task of collecting, manipulating and reporting data, to actually taking actions on that data to positively impact our sustainability goals and programs,” Burrell explains.

Pioneering new use cases for a future-ready campus

Now, NAU’s actions can extend far beyond optimizing individual buildings. The team is eager to incorporate real-time grid CO2 emissions data into their operations, for example. This capability will not only enhance sustainability reporting but also help NAU understand how shifting and shaping building loads can drive further energy savings.

“Willow has enabled us to transition from reactive maintenance to proactive management,” Burrell noted. “We’re not just solving immediate challenges; we’re building a platform that supports the future of our campus.”

Although many of NAU’s technology investments happen behind the scenes, these new capabilities also help NAU technicians do their physical jobs more efficiently.

It used to take someone years—if not decades—to learn all the ins and outs of managing HVAC on campus. Now, frontline workers can access the information they need to learn fast, and Burrell says they can activate people quickly. “We can give that experience to an individual new on the job within the first week of them being here.”

The team is excited to implement other efficiencies that will help technicians. One of these is Willow Copilot, where technicians can use a natural language chat to ask questions about their facilities and buildings that they would otherwise have to chase down the information.

A strong partnership for a smarter tomorrow

None of these successes would have been possible without NAU’s strategic partnership with Willow.

“Willow has been really good at asking us the right questions and presenting the right ‘what-ifs,’ listening to us, and demonstrating how to solve our problems,” Burrell says. “They’ve been very agile, engaged, and collegial in that process, which is the kind of partner we’re looking for.”

With Willow’s support, NAU has invested in a foundation that will support all new builds, with data from every new building flowing into their existing infrastructure. What’s more, NAU researchers are repurposing campus data from Willow and incorporating a read-only version into curricula across various university departments to prepare career-ready graduates.

With its forward-thinking approach to data integration, energy management, and AI-driven tools, NAU is building a smarter, more sustainable future and setting a new standard for sustainability and innovation in higher education.

Cut costs, save energy, and drive sustainability with the #1 AI-driven platform for the built world.

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